The number of business acronyms now can seem overwhelming. Technology evolves, and new concepts arise. You have most probably heard of IaaS (Infrastructure as a service), PaaS (platform as a service), and SaaS (software as a service). But what does XaaS (anything as a service) stand for?
Why do you need cloud computing XaaS? Why should you choose XaaS over SaaS, PaaS, or IaaS alone? How to choose a reliable provider of XaaS development services? Let’s discover together.
Why go for XaaS cloud computing? Key benefits
It is safe to say that all “-as a service” offerings aim to create customized services to meet your specific needs. With the help of the XaaS business model, you can experience benefits that will make your business more effective. Thanks to cloud computing XaaS, you can:
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Reduce capital expenses
Businesses can purchase XaaS development services on a subscription basis. It allows cutting down expenses, as you don’t need to install each service on-site and worry about integrating them together. You go for the cloud approach instead. XaaS cloud computing enables scaling cloud servers, infrastructure - anything you need and pay as you go. So, you transform capital expenditures into operating expenses.
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Experiment
XaaS business model allows businesses to adapt to changing market conditions quickly. Multitenant approaches in the cloud makes you flexible that is critical amid modern reality. With XaaS, you can simply add or subtract services on demand. So, whenever you want, for instance, to test a new approach, access new technology, and see if it fits your business, you can go for XaaS development services and learn it the easy way.
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Innovate easier
Organizations are turning to a XaaS business model to modernize operations as well as free up resources to innovate. Many businesses are also using the benefits of XaaS to become more agile and transform digitally. This approach allows more users to access cutting-edge technologies and democratizes innovation.
Despite the attractive benefits of XaaS in cloud computing, this approach also may bring about some challenges you should know of.
Challenges of cloud computing XaaS and how to overcome them
1. Security of XaaS cloud computing
Secure access to anything as a service is of prime importance. To overcome security issues, developers must pay attention to data encryption, prevent phishing attacks, and comply with international security standards.
When it comes to the cloud, security gets even more critical. Cloud security is about people that use the technology. It is vital to ensure that the technology is in the right hands. So the educated workforce is utterly essential.
So, you should consider investing in cloud security tools such as Cloud Workload Protection (CWP), Cloud Access Security Brokers (CASB), and Cloud Security Posture Management (CSPM). These tools will protect your data, storage, and workloads from exposure or attack across XaaS.
2. Difficulty to address XaaS-related issues
Anything as a service relieves IT staff of day-to-day operational headaches. However, if something goes south, it might be harder to troubleshoot. Maintaining high-performing, robust networks can cost—although the overall expenses savings are typically much more significant with the XaaS business model.
3. Downtime
Availability of the system must be your top priority. However, some issues may arise. For instance, Internet reliability, resilience, provisioning, and managing infrastructure resources are some of such challenges. If XaaS servers go down, users cannot access them.
Also, the system might not be fully accessible when a new system version is released. To overcome this, you can go for a zero-downtime deployment strategy. This approach allows the service to stay fully responsive during the deployment process. What’s more, cloud providers offer tools that can help to configure blue/green or zero-downtime deployment.
When you know the challenges you may face when adopting the XaaS business model, it’s time to discover the solution to these challenges. The solution is as simple as finding a trusted partner to work with.
Anything as a service is yet another field that skyrocketed due to the global pandemic. According to the Deloitte survey, 81% of organizations claim that the pandemic triggered them to go for the XaaS business model instead of traditional IT. As a result, more and more organizations have started looking for a partner that offers quality XaaS services. Finding the one, however, can be a complex process.
How to choose a trusted XaaS provider?
You should keep in mind many aspects when selecting a vendor that offers XaaS services. However, we will focus on the ones of primary importance.
1. Strong tech expertise
XaaS cloud computing takes robust expertise. So, your vendor should have a proven track record in various domains to perform it well. For instance, your XaaS provider should have strong cloud computing expertise to host your XaaS efficiently.
You need a strong team with versatile expertise to successfully bring your XaaS solution to life. The project requires such experts as:
- Solution architects to build scalable architecture;
- DevOps experts to integrate all the components of your solution and work with servers;
- Software developers to code;
- A delivery manager to streamline the effective communication between a development team and yourself;
- Project manager to assign and estimate tasks;
- Testers to work on the quality of the delivered code.
2. The agility of your potential provider of XaaS development services
Agile software development brings benefits that are vital for the majority of businesses. Take a look at some of them:
- Faster product delivery;
- Easier management of changing priorities;
- Enhanced quality;
- Lower costs;
- Cost and time predictability.
All these aspects are critical, so it is good to select a XaaS provider with agile processes in place.
3. Experience with all the needed tools
Today’s technology offers a great variety of XaaS development tools to build a product. XaaS business model obtains the complex architecture delivered using different frameworks, libraries, and tools. Here are the most used ones:
Cloud platforms for hosting and maintenance
The majority of XaaS companies use third-party providers to host their products. Cloud vendors like Azure, GCP, and AWS offer a wide choice in terms of hardware, supporting software, and DevOps tools.
Server-side technologies
XaaS server-side technologies are not different from the usual web development ones. So, you are free to choose anything that fits your requirements - be it NodeJS, .NET, Java, PHP, or any other. The main criteria are - the chosen technology should be easy to use, customizable, and have documentation available.
Front-end technologies
JS frameworks have successfully gained their leading positions in the market. Angular, React, and others are widely used to deliver excellent UI/UX designs.
Anything as a service success stories
1. Global manufacturer (under NDA)
Our client is a Global Fortune 100 engineering and technology company. Our client introduced a logistics platform for internal use to enhance the logistics between its 400+ warehouses in 60+ countries. The platform, however, turned out to be difficult to scale because of its monolithic architecture.
They partnered with N-iX to make this platform more effective. Our Solution Architect designed a cloud-native infrastructure for their platform. The new infrastructure was based on Azure Kubernetes. Also, our solution group made the decision on the tech stack and created the roadmap of the project.
Our specialists have migrated the platform to microservices. This approach allows adding new SaaS services smoothly. They are, for example, anomaly detection, route recommendations, delivery prediction, object detection in logistics, Natural Language Processing (NLP) for document verification, optical character recognition of labels on boxes, data mining, and sensor data processing.
DevOps expertise was also vital for our client. So, we are working on the DevOps pipeline from scratch. Apart from that, we are setting up the development and QA environment in Azure and introducing CI/CD processes that allow us to deploy microservices to the environment much easier.
2. Code Worldwide
This company helps its customers boost their marketing through technology and data. They offer adZU OS - SaaS web solution used for marketing automation by 10,000+ businesses in 113 countries. AdZU OS helps other businesses to automate the creation of their marketing communications, advertising materials, as well as brand experiences.
Code Worldwide partnered with N-iX to:
- support of a large number of tenants (ensuring tenant onboarding and setup, issue fixing, deployment, and support of AWS infrastructure);
- boost time to market due to CI/CD process improvements;
- drive quality first approach with release flow ownership. Our development teams are release owners for the whole product of ten teams);
- integrate SAFe approach into the development pipeline.
Code Worldwide engaged our experts to support the system, set up efficient integration of services, as well as ensure their stability. For now, there are over 200 microservices created in .NET 4.7 and ten microservices in .NET Core. Together with the client, our specialists developed an API with ASP.NET WebAPI. We use tools such as Swagger to follow the Open API 3.0 specifications.
Why adopt anything as a service with N-iX?
- N-iX cloud specialists can help you transition to Software as a Service (SaaS), Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS), Platform as a Service (PaaS), or any other "as a service" business model smoothly;
- N-iX has strong expertise in microservices, DevOps, and Agile software development.
- N-iX is a global software development service company with offices and development centres across Europe and in the USA.
- N-iX has an internal talent pool of over 2,200 professionals that can help you boost your project delivery;
- We offer different cooperation models, including a dedicated development team, T&M, and fixed price.
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